Contract dispute took 9 months over a missing comma

Signed a vendor agreement back in March with a small supply company in Cleveland. One line about renewal terms was vague, honestly my fault for not having a lawyer look at it first. They claimed it auto-renewed for another year, I said no way. Spent 9 months going back and forth, finally settled last week for half the amount they wanted. The frustrating part is a single clarifying sentence would have prevented all of it. Has anyone else had a seemingly minor wording issue blow up into a long legal fight?

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kevin_west6d ago

A buddy of mine had a similar issue with his lease, one line about parking spaces that sounded fine until the landlord tried to charge him extra. It took him eight months and a lawyer just to get the landlord to admit the wording was unclear, and he still lost a few hundred dollars in the end. That little experience taught me to read everything twice, even the parts that look like boilerplate.